“Call the greasy little fiend and find out,” Brutus said.
In his den, Jessie activated the nether-world telephone and typed out Kanastorous’ home number. After a long pause, while the call wailed down the ethereal line, the demon answered.
“Where’s Gayla?” Jessie asked.
Sheepishly, Kanastorous said, “I was about to call you about that.”
“Are you trying to back out of your contract?” Jessie asked.
“Not at all!” the demon said. “It’s much more complicated than that, my pistol-packing friend.”
“How complicated?”
“I can’t tell you now,” Kanastorous said,
“When can you?”
“Dinner tonight?” the demon asked. “Same booth at the Four Worlds, say at six o’clock?”
“I’d like to know what’s up. I’d like to know now.”
“What good will it do you to know now instead of later?” the demon asked. “You’re only going to bed for the rest of the day anyhow. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Besides, this line is too public.”
Grudgingly, Jessie said, “Okay, tonight at six, at the Four Worlds.”
When he hung up and turned around, Brutus was standing in the doorway, scowling. “I sense very strong forces moving in the background,” he growled. “Someone has made Kanastorous shut his mouth, and that’s not easily done.”
“We’ll know tonight, at six,” Jessie said.
“We’ll know what Kanastorous wants us to know,” the hound said. He padded away into the living room.
Chapter Six
After seven hours of sound sleep, Jessie and Brutus (who had not slept at all and did not need to) returned to the Four Worlds Cafe, where a group of Pure Earthers had just begun a sit-down demonstration before the big, revolving doors. There were about thirty of them, chained together, and Jessie recognized the old woman to whom he had spoken the night before. She was at the end of the line, one arm chained to a comrade, the other to a fire hydrant.
“I ought to go say hello to her,” Jessie said.
“If you do, I’ll use that fireplug she’s chained to.”
“You wouldn’t,” Jessie said, shocked. “Anyway, you couldn’t. The hell hound myth indicates you can ingest whatever you want, but there isn’t a word about elimination.”
“Well, it would be a symbolic thing,” the hound said. “I’d just let out a stream of ectoplasm.”
“I think we better forget it,” the detective said, stepping over the chained arms in front of the door and going inside.
In the mirrored foyer, a golden boy with huge wings and a halo rakishly over his head approached them and said, “Good evening, gentlemen. I am Robert, your host.” He was wearing white robes and leather sandals, a very winning angel.
“What happened to Mabel?” Jessie asked.
“The Shambler?”
“Yes, her.”
“Mabel comes on when it gets dark and goes home before dawn. She’s a night beast, you know.”
“I guess I knew, but I forgot,” Jessie said, punching out a tip on the angel’s stand and letting the scanner have his thumbprint. “How does she find time to terrorize children if she works during the night and hides from the sun during the day?”
“She’s off on weekends,” the angel said. “Saturday and Sunday nights, she terrorizes.”
“I see,” Jessie said.
“May I take your coat, sir?”
“I’ll keep it, thank you. Just take us to Mr. Kanastorous. He ought to be here already.”
“Yes, of course,” the angel said. “That round-headed little—”
“Demon,” Brutus finished.
“Thank you,” the angel said. “I’ve nothing against Mr. Kanastorous, or his kind, you understand. It’s just that I find it hard to say that word and others like it.” He opened the inner doors and took them into the main club room.
Because it was still light outside, some of the club’s more exotic denizens, like Mabel, and vampires, and other beasts, had yet to leave their coffins for dinner. Though the club was half-filled, with maseni and humans and supernaturals, the spirits here now were rather plain. They passed a table of four big black men who were all wearing overalls and eating huge slices of watermelon. They laughed raucously and used phrases like “scrumptious good” and “lordy mama” and “dis a fancy sweet melon, all right.” Jessie could see that all four of them hated the goddamned watermelon, but were compelled to gobble it up. They’d have to finish a slice apiece, spitting seeds across the room, before they could order what they really wanted. That was, after all, what the white-man-made myth said the “nigger” was supposed to do. At another table, a group of mythical Italians were suffering a similar problem. Three men (all dressed in baggy suits, vests, badly-knotted ties) and three women (in baggy, flowered dresses, slips showing, hair in greasy disarray, all wearing rosaries around their necks) were working on small plates of spaghetti, sauce running down their chins, laughing uproariously, speaking in heavily accented English, using phrases like “atsa good spaghet” and “you licka da sauce, or isa too tomatoey?” and “mama mia” and “atsa way to eat, Vito, bambino!”